Conversations Without Walls: Barbara Dilley & Yvonne Rainer with Wendy Perron
Livestream: Saturday, November 21, 12pm ET
YouTube link will be sent to registrants on Saturday morning prior to the livestream, and will be posted on our website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@DanspaceProject)
Viewers are encouraged to comment and ask questions via the YouTube chat function. Perron will join Danspace’s Benjamin Akio Kimitch in the chat to respond and share insights!
This special Conversation Without Walls is between dancer and Danspace co-founder, Barbara Dilley, and artist, Yvonne Rainer, facilitated by writer, Wendy Perron. This CWW celebrates the 50th anniversary of the legendary, leaderless group of improvisors, Grand Union‘s first performances and the publication of Perron’s new book, The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance, 1970 – 1976 (Wesleyan University Press, 2020).
The Grand Union was a Soho, NYC-based collective that came out of Rainer’s work, the task-oriented Continuous Project Altered Daily (1970). This group, which Perron coins “the movie stars of our neighborhood,” consisted of Becky Arnold, Trisha Brown, Barbara Dilley (previously Lloyd), Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nancy Lewis (previously Green), Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, and Lincoln Scott.
This CWW features rare archival video of performances of Continuous Project Altered Daily, and Grand Union performances at LoGiudice Gallery (NYC) and Oberlin College (Ohio). The three women delve deep into the stories behind the performances and consider the historical context and setting of this moment – the beginning of second wave of feminism and the anti-war movement.
The CWW digital series are pre-recorded and will be streamed on YouTube and archived on the Danspace Project online Journal. More about Conversations Without Walls
Accessibility: this program will be captioned
Barbara Dilley trained and performed dance in New York City (1960-1975) with the Merce Cunningham Dance Co., Yvonne Rainer, and the Grand Union, a dance/theater collaboration that extended the definitions of dance/theater improvisation. Her ensemble, Natural History of the American Dancer; Lesser Known Species explored structured improvisational forms she continues to teach. In 1975 she moved to Boulder, CO to design the Dance/Movement Studies Program at Naropa University, then serve as President (1985-1993). She retired in 2015. Her book, This Very Moment ~ teaching thinking dancing, was published by Naropa University Press in 2015.
Yvonne Rainer, one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater (1962), made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/ dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature-length films, she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”). Since then she has made ten dances. Her publications include a memoir, “Feelings Are Facts: a Life” (2006), among others. A selection of her poetry was published in 2011 by Paul Chan’s Badlands Unlimited. She is a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, a U.S.A. Fellowship, and a Yoko Ono Courage Award.
Wendy Perron teaches dance history at Juilliard and a graduate seminar at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. As a dancer/choreographer in the 1970s–1990s, she performed at Danspace, Lincoln Center Festival, The Joyce, and other venues. A former editor in chief of Dance Magazine, she published a selection of her writing in Through the Eyes of a Dancer. She now posts articles, including the new series “Unsung Heroes of Dance History,” at WENDYPERRON.COM. Her new book, The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance, 1970–1976, was just published by Wesleyan University Press.